


kujanani

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: Mahabharata fics [19]
Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Ficlet, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood, Oneshot, Originally Posted on Tumblr, mothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:22:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22416211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: Fool, martyr, masochist, blindwoman, coward. They will call Queen Gandhari all these and more, and they may well all be true.Title means “bad mother” in Sanskrit.
Relationships: Gandhari & her sons
Series: Mahabharata fics [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1108677
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	kujanani

Fool, martyr, masochist, blindwoman, coward. They will call Queen Gandhari all these and more, and they may well all be true. What kind of woman marries a blind man, then blindfolds herself, and then insists on having a  _ hundred  _ sons? How did she ever  _ dream  _ she could handle all of them, even sighted?

No wonder they became what they did. Wretched dirt-born creatures never stood a chance. Madwoman probably only ever remembered a dozen of their names.

Gandhari closed her ears and twisted her lips into anguished silence and cushioned when she should have curbed and cuffed, and she constructed Kurukshetra as surely as Krishna did, failing her sons as she did her kingdoms. But let it be also known that she knew every one of her children’s names, that she could tell them apart by the sound of their paces alone, that she (not their father) inspired them to be fiercely loyal to one another, that she taught them (her eldest in particular) not to judge a man by the strength of his body, that she carried the individual sounds of each one’s laughter all her life, even into the flames.

**Author's Note:**

> My original tags from Tumblr:
> 
> #hindu mythology #gandhari #she was not perfect not at all #she closed her eyes to so many things #but she *knew* her sons every one of them #even what she wished she didn’t #she knew but didn’t act #but she *knew* #don’t mind me i’m just having a lot of feels about mothers tonight #imperfect and indulgent and sowing the seeds of their own destruction #and yet they know their children as surely as they know themselves


End file.
